The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy

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Now in its fifth edition, this historically organized introductory text treats philosophy as a dramatic and continuous story-a conversation about humankind's deepest and most persistent concerns. Tracing the exchange of ideas between history's key philosophers, The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy, Fifth Edition, demonstrates that while constructing an argument or making a claim, one philosopher almost always has others in mind. The book addresses the fundamental questions of human life: Who are we? What can we know? How should we live? and What sort of reality do we inhabit?

Norman Melchert is Selfridge Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and was Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University

A Word to Instructors

ix

A Word to Students

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Before Philosophy: Myth in Hesiod and Homer

1

(9)

Hesiod: War among the Gods

2

(2)

Homer: Heroes, Gods, and Excellence

4

(6)

Philosophy before Socrates

10

(27)

Thales: The One as Water

11

(1)

Anaximander: The One as the Boundless

12

(2)

Xenophanes: The Gods as Fictions

14

(2)

Profile: Pythagoras

16

(3)

Heraclitus: Oneness in the Logos

19

(5)

Parmenides: Only the One

24

(4)

Zeno: The Paradoxes of Common Sense

28

(2)

Atomism: The One and the Many Reconciled

30

(7)

The Key: An Ambiguity

30

(2)

The World

32

(1)

The Soul

33

(2)

How to Live

35

(2)

The Sophists: Rhetoric and Relativism in Athens

37

(22)

Democracy

37

(1)

The Persian Wars

38

(2)

The Sophists

40

(9)

Rhetoric

42

(2)

Relativism

44

(1)

Physis and Nomos

45

(4)

Athens and Sparta at War

49

(5)

Aristophanes and Reaction

54

(5)

Socrates: To Know Oneself

59

(12)

Character

60

(3)

Is Socrates a Sophist?

63

(3)

What Socrates ``Knows''

66

(5)

We Ought to Search for Truth

66

(1)

Human Excellence Is Knowledge

67

(1)

All Wrongdoing Is Due to Ignorance

68

(1)

The Most Important Thing of All Is to Care for Your Soul

69

(2)

The Trial and Death of Socrates

71

(46)

Euthyphro

71

(14)

Translator's Introduction

71

(1)

The Dialogue

72

(8)

Commentary and Questions

80

(5)

Apology

85

(18)

Translator's Introduction

85

(1)

The Dialogue

85

(13)

Commentary and Questions

98

(5)

Crito

103

(10)

Translator's Introduction

103

(1)

The Diaglogue

103

(7)

Commentary and Questions

110

(3)

Phaedo (Death Scene)

113

(4)

Translator's Introduction

113

(1)

The Dialogue (Selection)

113

(2)

Commentary and Questions

115

(2)

Plato: Knowing the Real and the Good

117

(40)

Knowledge and Opinion

118

(8)

Making the Distinction

119

(1)

We Do Know Certain Truths

120

(1)

The Objects of Knowledge

121

(3)

The Reality of the Forms

124

(2)

The World and the Forms

126

(8)

How Forms Are Related to the World

126

(3)

Lower and Higher Forms

129

(2)

The Form of the Good

131

(3)

The Love of Wisdom

134

(8)

What Wisdom Is

134

(4)

Love and Wisdom

138

(4)

The Soul

142

(3)

The Immortality of the Soul

142

(2)

The Structure of the Soul

144

(1)

Justice

145

(6)

The State

151

(2)

Problems with the Forms

153

(4)

Aristotle: The Reality of the World

157

(43)

Aristotle and Plato

157

(3)

Otherworldliness

157

(1)

The Objects of Knowledge

158

(1)

Human Nature

158

(1)

Relativism and Skepticism

158

(1)

Ethics

159

(1)

Logic and Knowledge

160

(9)

Terms and Statements

161

(2)

Truth

163

(1)

Reasons Why: The Syllogism

164

(3)

Knowing First Principles

167

(2)

The World

169

(5)

Nature

170

(1)

The Four ``Becauses''

170

(2)

Is There Purpose in Nature?

172

(1)

Teleology

173

(1)

First Philosophy

174

(7)

Not Plato's Forms

175

(1)

What of Mathematics?

176

(1)

Substance and Form

176

(2)

Pure Actualities

178

(1)

God

179

(2)

The Soul

181

(5)

Levels of Soul

181

(1)

Soul and Body

182

(2)

Nous

184

(2)

The Good Life

186

(14)

Happiness

188

(3)

Virtue or Excellence (Arete)

191

(1)

The Role of Reason

192

(3)

Responsibility

195

(1)

The Highest Good

196

(4)

Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics: Happiness for the Many

200

(18)

The Epicureans

201

(5)

The Stoics

206

(5)

The Skeptics

211

(7)

The Christians: Sin, Salvation, and Love

218

(10)

Background

219

(2)

Jesus

221

(4)

The Meaning of Jesus

225

(3)

Augustine: God and the Soul

228

(39)

Wisdom, Happiness, and God

234

(4)

The Interior Teacher

238

(2)

God and the World

240

(8)

The Great Chain of Being

241

(3)

Evil

244

(1)

Time

245

(3)

Human Nature and Its Corruption

248

(6)

Human Nature and Its Restoration

254

(3)

Augustine on Relativism

257

(2)

The Two Cities

259

(3)

Christians and Philosophers

262

(5)

Reason and Authority

262

(1)

Intellect and Will

263

(1)

Augustine on Epicureans and Stoics

263

(4)

Anselm and Aquinas: Existence and Essence in God and the World

267

(32)

Anselm: On That, Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived

267

(5)

Thomas Aquinas: Rethinking Aristotle

272

(21)

Philosophy and Theology

273

(1)

Existence and Essence

274

(2)

From Creation to God

276

(6)

The Nature of God

282

(2)

Humans: Their Souls

284

(2)

Humans: Their Knowledge

286

(2)

Humans: Their Good

288

(5)

Ockham and Skeptical Doubts---Again

293

(6)

Moving from Medieval to Modern

299

(23)

The World God Made for Man

300

(4)

The Humanists

304

(2)

Reforming the Church

306

(5)

Skeptical Thoughts Revived

311

(3)

Copernicus to Kepler to Galileo: The Great Triple Play

314

(8)

Rene Descartes: Doubting Our Way to Certainty

322

(42)

The Method

325

(2)

Meditations: Commentary and Questions

327

(12)

Meditations on First Philosophy

339

(21)

Meditation I

339

(2)

Meditation II

341

(3)

Meditation III

344

(5)

Meditation IV

349

(3)

Meditation V

352

(2)

Meditation VI

354

(6)

What Has Descartes Done?

360

(4)

A New Ideal for Knowledge

360

(1)

A New Vision of Reality

361

(1)

Problems

361

(1)

The Preeminence of Epistemology

362

(2)

Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley: Materialism and the Beginnings of Empiricism

364

(37)

Catching Persons in the Net of the New Science

364

(11)

Thomas Hobbes

Method

365

(1)

Minds and Motives

366

(6)

Profile

372

(1)

Francis Bacon

The Natural Foundation of Moral Rules

373

(2)

Looking to Experience

375

(14)

John Locke

Origin of Ideas

377

(1)

Idea of Substance

378

(1)

Idea of the Soul

379

(1)

Idea of Personal Identity

380

(2)

Language and Essence

382

(2)

The Extent of Knowledge

384

(2)

Of Representative Government

386

(2)

Of Toleration

388

(1)

Ideas into Things

389

(12)

George Berkeley

Abstract Ideas

390

(3)

Ideas and Things

393

(5)

God

398

(3)

David Hume: Unmasking the Pretensions of Reason

401

(30)

How Newton Did It

402

(1)

To Be the Newton of Human Nature

403

(2)

The Theory of Ideas

405

(2)

The Association of Ideas

407

(1)

Causation: The Very Idea

407

(7)

The Disappearing Self

414

(3)

Rescuing Human Freedom

417

(2)

Is It Reasonable to Believe in God?

419

(4)

Understanding Morality

423

(4)

Reason Is Not a Motivator

423

(2)

The Origins of Moral Judgment

425

(2)

Is Hume a Skeptic?

427

(4)

Immanuel Kant: Rehabilitating Reason (within Strict Limits)

431

(37)

Critique

433

(1)

Judgments

434

(2)

Geometry, Mathematics, Space, and Time

436

(3)

Common Sense, Science, and the A Priori Categories

439

(4)

Profile: Baruch Spinoza

443

(1)

Phenomena and Noumena

444

(2)

Profile: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

446

(1)

Reasoning and the Ideas of Metaphysics: God, World, and Soul

447

(9)

The Soul

449

(1)

The World and the Free Will

450

(3)

God

453

(1)

The Ontological Argument

454

(2)

Reason and Morality

456

(12)

The Good Will

457

(3)

The Moral Law

460

(2)

Autonomy

462

(1)

Freedom

463

(5)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Taking History Seriously

468

(29)

Historical and Intellectual Context

469

(2)

The French Revolution

469

(1)

The Romantics

470

(1)

Epistemology Internalized

471

(1)

Profile: Arthur Schopenhauer

472

(5)

Self and Others

477

(4)

Stoic and Skeptical Consciousness

481

(1)

Hegel's Analysis of Christianity

482

(2)

Reason and Reality: The Theory of Idealism

484

(2)

Spirit Made Objective: The Social Character of Ethics

486

(6)

History and Freedom

492

(5)

Kierkegaard and Marx: Two Ways to ``Correct'' Hegel

497

(27)

Kierkegaard: On Individual Existence

497

(18)

The Aesthetic

498

(3)

The Ethical

501

(3)

The Religious

504

(8)

The Individual

512

(3)

Marx: Beyond Alienation and Exploitation

515

(9)

Alienation, Exploitation, and Private Property

517

(3)

Communism

520

(4)

The Utilitarians: Moral Rules and the Happiness of All (Including Women)